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Occupation in retreat: time to drive the US and UK out

“The British have given up and know they will be leaving Iraq soon. They are retreating because of the resistance they have faced. Without that they would have stayed for much longer, there is no doubt. The British have realised this is a war they should not be fighting.”

This was the stunning verdict on Britain’s four and a half year occupation of Iraq given by Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Shia resistance Mahdi army, to Patrick Cockburn of The Independent newspaper. The problem for British generals and politicians, trying to rubbish this as propaganda, is that it is a verdict shared by Britain’s allies.

Earlier this month, Ken Pollack, a foreign affairs expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said: “I am assuming the British will no longer be there. They are not there now. We have a British battle group holed up in Basra airport. It is the wild, wild west. Basra is out of control.”

Recently retired US general Jack Keane was even more scathing. He accused Britain of “general disengagement from what the key issues are around Basra”, of never having “had enough troops to truly protect the population”, and leaving the city “gradually deteriorating, with almost gangland warfare”.

But such comments are unlikely to have much effect on British policy, which is to effectively withdraw from Iraq. In a week’s time, 500 troops will abandon Basra Palace their last base in the city, leaving just 5,000 soldiers, holed up in Basra airport.

As always in war, however, retreat is far from an easy or safe option. Forty-one British soldiers have been killed this year, by far the heaviest death rate since the invasion itself, as the insurgents sense their demoralisation and vulnerability, every patrol is targeted. Nightly mortar attacks on the palace and the airport compound make sleep difficult.

In an attempt to hide the truth from the British public, the Ministry of Defence last month took away soldiers’ rights to “blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play in multi-player computer games or send text messages or photographs without the permission of a superior” (The Guardian). The truth and rank and file soldiers’ basic democratic rights are incompatible with British imperialism.

US anger is directed at both the political and the military consequences of British withdrawal. Not only is the “coalition of the willing” that led the invasion of Iraq in 2003 without a United Nations mandate now effectively reduced to one: the USA. But it also leaves the US “surge” of extra troops that started in February in tatters.

There are now between 170,000 and 190,000 US troops in Iraq, the highest number ever. General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, presented an assessment on the impact of the surge to Congress on 10 September, making out it has been a success of sorts. But with 3,723 US casualties and rising civilian deaths, this is a blatant lie.

Dictatorship or partition?

“Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future” Brig. Gen. John Bednarek, one of the commanders of the Task Force Lightning offensive in Diyala province told CNN. With the situation in Iraq worsening every day, the US forces are preparing to discard the tattered sham of a democray they still use to justify the invasion.

Faced with the inability of the Iraqi government, riven by religious and ethnic divisions of the occupying powers own creation, to unite and govern Iraq, the occupying power is preparing the ground for the installation of military strongman willing to do its bidding without having to pander to different ethnic or religious groups and not prone to influence from Iran or Syria. Criticism of the Iraqi government from US officials is mounting and army officers are quietly rephrasing their statements to the press to reflect that they are no longer in Iraq for democracy but to provide “security” and stability”.

If that fails then the utterly barbaric solution of partitioning Iraq along religious, ethnic lines between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish groups in order to divide the insurgency and allow the imperialists to play the different factions against one another will be carried out

What would be the horrific consequences of any such partition were seen recently in tragic massacre of more than 500 members of the non-Muslim Yezidis. A small religious minority of Iraq with no economic or political power the Yezidi, like the Christian and Turcoman minorities within Iraq have found themselves squeezed between the sectarian fighting between Shia and Sunni factions. Attacks like these would only increase under partition as sectarian groups attempted to establish their dominance in areas by ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The blame for the sectarian strife however does not rest with the Iraqi people. It is the end result of the imperialists attempts to control Iraq. The imperialists policy of divide and rule, playing Sunni and Shia groups against one another, installing a confessional system of government that forced Iraqi’s to align themselves with either Kurd, Sunni or Shia factions and the extreme violence and brutality visited upon the Iraqi people by the occupation itself has created fertile grounds for sectarianism. The idea that the occupying forces are protecting the Iraqi people from this violence is farcical. Attacks on civilians have increased since the start of the American “surge” in Baghdad as local militia’s which defend the population are driven out of the area’s they protect, leaving the populace prey to sectarian militias. In Basra the British forces do not venture from their base at the airport and are constantly attacked by the very people they claim to be defending.

Troops out now!

But Britain’s imperialist strategists do have an exit strategy: to pour more troops into Afghanistan. This is being promoted as a “good” war. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Liberal democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell and Major General Richard Dannatt all want to conquer Afghanistan. Brown has even hinted at British military involvement in Darfur, while quietly backing sanctions and the threat of air strikes against Iran and the siege of Hamas-controlled Gaza in Palestine.

The coming conferences and day schools, called by Stop the War must focus on pressing home our demands for the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan! Lift the sanctions on Iran! Aid to Gaza, and recognise the elected Hamas government now!

As well as mass demonstrations, Stop the War, along with Military Families Against the War, should directly aid rank and file soldiers to meet and organise independently from their officers, and to encourage them not to fight these wars, to disobey orders. They should organise direct action at military bases.

Above all, they should organise solidarity with and support for all those fighting against the imperialist invaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• All troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq now!

• Victory to the resistance!

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